Monday

It's Monday...been awhile since I've taken time to write here. Nothing much is happening - just daily life mainly. I'm a bit "coldy" at the moment - thought it was allergies yesterday but have decided it's likely a cold trying to come on. I'm drinking fluids and taking vitamin C and trying to sleep when I can. I came home from my morning route this morning and took a nap immediately. However since I got up I have been puttering around the house - doing laundry, packing, tackling clearing off my craft desk. The craft desk can be seen again - while there is still stuff on it it's no longer a "Fibber McGhee" attack waiting to happen. The pile on the floor is still there - I may get to that before afternoon route time. The challenge is that I've packed up part of the craft room but not all of it - therefore what's not packed is no longer really organized. I feel like I'm accomplishing though and that's needed.

I talked to my girlfriend who took our wedding pictures over the weekend. She said at least some if not all of them will be in the mail today. Hopefully by the end of this week I will be able to see how they all turned out. I'm both excited and a little nervous about that. She's an excellent photographer - I'm most definitely NOT an excellent subject.

We did not have a Saturday meet this past week. That was lovely to be honest. We spent the day up at the house - cleaning and painting. Floors are not in yet but Squirrel's room has one coat of paint. Both the "little" bathroom - outside Squirrel's room and the mudroom mostly have one coat of paint on them. The family room (more of a "great room" I think) is painted and the kitchen has 1 coat - except where cupboards will hide unpainted areas. Those are being left primed. The master bedroom has 2 coats on most of it - then we ran out of paint. Lights are up in most rooms - not the "little bathroom" and not completely in the master bedroom and closet. This week kitchen cabinets should go in - as should flooring in most areas that are painted. We still must make at least one more trip to the home improvement store to get door handles and kitchen knobs. I have no good idea how long the finishing will take - we don't have trim yet to my knowledge - but am really thinking that we will be done by the end of this month. Though moving is difficult and there will still be lots of sorting and packing to do I am eagerly anticipating being able to get in and get settled. I still have lots of wood to stain and seal - have to decide on color for that yet. I am still taking pictures as we go but have not been able to find my disk so I can download them to the computer.

B is off this week - planning on spending most of the week helping his dad get things finished up for the upcoming auction this Saturday. (Squirrel has a meet so I will miss part of the day - it will be emotional for B's family as the auction is happening because his dad is terminally ill). I do plan to go up there a couple of time to take pictures of preparations and some of the antiques. To me - while it's heartbreaking on the one hand it's also fascinating to see and be able to learn about the antique tractors and stuff. I'm really hoping though that we can get at least one breakfast date in as well.

There are parent/teacher conferences to attend, cross country meets and other activities. It will be another busy week but should be interesting.

We are on a scheduled School Improvement Day this morning - that means that we all go in 2 1/2 hours later than normal. It was nice to be able to sleep just a wee bit this morning - still had to get up to get Dipstick to his bus stop. It's quite cool this morning and the weathermen are predicting cloudy with a chance of showers. However at the moment the clouds are scattered and glimpses of the sun can be seen. I am thankful for that as the last couple of days have been rather gloomy.

Last night I drove another cross country meet for the boys - the last one that the middle school and high school have together. No PR's for the boys though I felt both ran fairly well. Stretch especially had a nice kick at the end of the race - I can't always see him take off for the last 100m but this time I could. He was pretty discouraged when we got home though - feeling rather like the other guys on the team would prefer he was not on it. Guess there were comments made about me as the bus driver (and his mother) and my appearance as well as other comments about personal stuff on a couple of the other guys. Stretch didn't share all of it with me - just enough that I could see how much he was hurting. I'm certain some of it is that he seeks to live out his faith by his actions and words rather than "preaching" - that is guaranteeded to bring in some "picking on". His character shows through - he doesn't take shortcuts on the races and practices when others do. Some of it is also due to the fact that teenagers can be just mean.

It hurts me as his mother when I see him hurting - I still want so much to be the "protective mama bear" and stand up for him. But I know that I absolutely can't do that. He's going to have to learn to handle this kind of junk by himself - all I can do is stand by to comfort and encourage and pray for him.

Guess it's about time to scoot and get ready to drive.

Poison Rashes, Cross Country and House Update

I just started my second round of steroids to fight poison ivy (actually the first time it was poison oak) - but it was just 2 weeks ago. B is likely to make me buy my fruit rather than going out picking elderberries and wild grapes. But I find it rather satisfying to gather the fruit myself and make juice for jelly out of it. I'm not so fond of the poison rashes though. We will try again to find some homeopathic remedies.

The boys have another cross country meet tonight - this one is at the high school and is joint again. I'm interested to see how a joint meet will work at the high school. Hopefully the temperature will be cool enough for good running. The meet this past Saturday ended up being really hot - and long. I did not drive the bus - felt like that would be too much in combination with siding the house (not that I was doing that much siding but I wanted to be there for at least part of the day). I locked my car keys in the ignition of the car - that was a trip to say the least. I realized immediately that I had done it but had no spare key and had to end up having someone break into the car for me.

The house is looking good - we've got siding on it now - pretty much all the way around. The drywall is pretty much finished inside and priming it for paint has begun. The kitchen still needs done but it's started. We are to the point of starting to see the end of the project - I have yet to choose things like sinks and flooring for the mudroom and kitchen. But progress is definitely being made. I'm still picking paint colors - keep changing my mind slightly. That will likely continue until I actually purchase the paint.

The bus route is still going pretty good. Yesterday was a bit of an exciting afternoon - I had one of my top emergency hatches come flying off the bus - I caught a low-hanging telephone wire with the open hatch. I was still fairly full - the kids did great. I was thankful for mostly supportive parents and no injuries.

"For Sale by Owner"

Busy day today - I've had a "for sale by owner" sign out in the yard for about a week now - need to go down and take a picture of it (just because I take pictures of most things at some point). Anyway...we've had a couple of calls on the house asking for information and price. But yesterday the call was from a couple who had called for information wanting to schedule a time to come look at it - they are coming this evening about 5:30. B will be home - he thinks he knows the couple and wants to see them again. I'm thankful he will be here as I'm really nervous about showing the house - don't feel at all that it's ready to show or sell. There are boxes, packages and stuff everywhere - I realize that if this is the couple B thinks it is they will realize we are newly-weds and moving and make allowances. And having said that...we've spent a couple of evenings working outside trimming bushes, pulling weeds and generally cleaning up - it does look better outside. Inside needs bathrooms cleaned, kitchen cleaned and lots of picking up done - there's not more than that that I can do in one day. I am thankful for having had my family here - they did help a lot.

I am really looking forward to getting settled into our new place. I will definitely miss our fruit trees and my yard and location. However being settled in one larger, better laid out place will be a good thing - B will be able to come home and work in his shop in the evenings, we'll be able to eat together - at a reasonable hour more frequently and overall life will be able to become "normal".

Must go for now - will try to update more later...Life is busy but good.

Hoops

Breathe in slowly through the nose, out through the mouth. Breathe in, breathe out...slow and easy. Continue until ones thoughts calm down, ones blood pressure drops and one can consider the hoops one must jump through to change names and info on driver's license, work paperwork, etc more calmly. I made my 3rd trip to the BMV in a week today - up until this point I had been somewhat calm about it. Today...not so much. I have to go back yet again as I still didn't have everything I need to change my name to married name and my address to new address - yesterday they would have used the marriage license to change the address as well as the name - now that I've been to the SS office to get that changed. Today...I have to have some official mail with the new mailing address on it in addition to the marriage license and paper from the SS office. Now that I've spent the last hour attempting to calm down - I realize I've dealt with 3 different employees in the BMV who have all told me something different. I have called my bank who I've dealt with since we moved here - they will change name and address based on marriage license. Then on Tuesday I can get copies of bank statement with new information on it, take that along with marriage license and SS paper back to BMV - along with new hubby B - and hopefully accomplish what has currently been not possible. Thankfully my workplace is not demanding it be done immediately which helps.

I told the girl I talked to at the bank what was going on - told her this kind of stuff was something I expected to have to deal with overseas - I remember Dad having to take care of getting stuff updated or paperwork and planning on it taking most of the day. He knew that even banking could take a long time with one having to visit multiple offices/people to accomplish one thing. I remember tagging along with him and being thankful that I had a book to read as we would go stand in one line or another to eventually get everything stamped appropriately. Here in the US I do NOT expect to have to deal with multiple trips to the same place to try to accomplish changing one driver's license. I was talking to Suz yesterday - she commented that if a business was run as inefficently as the government is run said business would go under in very short order. I have to agree.

On a different note...I'm currently unable to download pictures to the computer from my camera to post. Somehow in the wedding rush and computer getting updated my card reader software has disappeared - both what was installed and the disk to reinstall it. The good news is that the pictures that were already downloaded are fine - I just need to get them backed up to disc. Hopefully soon I will get wedding pictures that I can post...we will see.

Squirrel has had 2 cross country meets - the first one was home and the second was quite aways away. I didn't attend the second one - I know he was disappointed about that and his time. However he is still doing quite well for a beginner - just needs to stick it out and keep working at it. Tomorrow I will drive bus for a joint meet with both boys.

Sept11...That date is one that will forever stay in memory. Most of us can remember where we were and what we were doing when we first heard about the terrorist attacks on the US. I know I do...I was on my way to the hospital to spend the day with my husband Mike who was fighting brain cancer and going through rehab so he could hopefully learn to come home and be "self-sufficient". That day no rehab was accomplished - he took those attacks against his country as extremely personal attacks because the planes used were owned by "his" company. He was angry, frustrated and depressed. I know beyond shadow of a doubt that had he been 5-10 years younger and healthy he would have been first in line to enlist to go fight back. Suz, who's since become one of my best friends, on the other hand had just had her world jarred by being told her husband Tim had a very aggressive brain cancer.

My heart aches today for all those who lost that day...who still lose as a result of that day.

Monday Musings

Busy busy couple of weeks...and I really should be doing peaches already this morning. I have tomatoes waiting also - from Suz. I'm waiting on a call back from the doctor's office this morning - got into some poison oak the end of last week while I was picking elderberries. The good news (!) is that it's poison oak - not poison ivy - so my "preventative" from the spring apparently works on at least poison ivy. That's somewhat encouraging. However the fact that the poison oak is up around my eyes and into my hairline makes things challenging - not something I want to mess around with. So we will see what the doctor says. And thankfully it's not something that spreads to other people so I can still drive bus and continue on with semi-normal life.

Today was a rather wild morning on the bus - checking on some bus conduct reports I turned in last week, having one of my "challenge" kids punching the side of the bus for no apparent reason while another little one was in puddles of tears...Thankfully most of this happened at the elementary school so I could get some back-up. Most of it was nothing that was a real discipline issue though.

The wedding went off fairly well I think. We had a nice time away - though it was short. We deliberately didn't plan on any kind of schedule - did some sightseeing, some sleeping and just enjoyed the time away together.

The house is coming along - the drywallers are supposed to be there starting today. Insulation is in...I'm told it will change appearance drastically as the drywall goes up. From there I've got to get paint colors finalized and get ready to get things painted. I'm not sure when flooring will go in but it would likely be easier to paint first. We'll see.

This past Saturday Stretch had his first cross country meet of the season. He did really well I think - finished with a time of 20:25 for the 5K. I didn't drive the bus this past week - am scheduled to drive for the next two Saturdays when both boys have meets at the same places. It should be interesting.

I'm going to post this and will come back later to add pictures.